


Werifesteria

by Wakeywakey_bigmistakey



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Minor Violence, Oneshot, Other minor characters - Freeform, misplaced worlds au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:19:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8599636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey/pseuds/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey
Summary: Based on a longer tumblr post by charminglyantiquated:there’s dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one,  being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where they’re delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didn’t miss it? what if you save the world and you’re given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and you’re furious.(..) OrLexa is getting back. She has to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Werifesteria (noun): an old english and dead word, werifesteria means to wander longingly through the forest in search of mystery.

Swivelling around, Lexa’s sword cut through the line of enemy soldiers with the grace and skill of a dancer. Feared by the Azgeda troops and beloved by the free armies of the coalition she united years prior, this is her calling. A glimpse of blonde hair makes her hesitate for a few seconds, before sending a bolt of fire down the hastily retreating lines of the Ice Queen’s warriors.

The spark it lights in her spreads, and she knows the battle is won. 

‘LEXA, WATCH OUT!’

She jumps back, only narrowly avoiding the sword that would have split her skull in half. It’s a man, tall as a tree and twice as broad, compared to her slender frame. His blade graced her around the eye, a line down her face bleeding heavily. Looking up with her one good eye, she recognizes him; a friend, once. 

She hesitates, even when she knows that it’s exactly what has cost many a life, but he doesn’t strike either.

‘Roan?’

He snarls, dropping his weapon and charging at her with only his bare fists. Instead of cutting him down, which she knows she could and should, she too drops her sword and quickly mumbles ‘ _ bash op _ ,’ one of the first spells she mastered.

With renewed strength, she meets his clash and they lock arms in a sort of wrestle. Roan’s face, lit up in a ghastly sort of smile, mutters ‘I can get you to the  _ kwin,  _ but only if you pretend I kill you,’ in a way indiscernible to anyone further away. With a quick nod, Lexa grabs a berry from a leather pouch in her belt; it’ll cause blood to run from her nose and a lowered pulse, but not much else.

With a last look around the battlefield, she locks eyes with a certain pair of piercing blue eyes. With a small gesture, she shows the leather pouch and Roan, nodding once certain that Clarke understands. 

Gazing at Roan, she lets out a scream of absolute agony before swallowing the dark berry and throwing herself in the mud.

The Trikru around looks up in shock, but the sight of their Heda dead makes flames shoot up in their eyes. Warcries erupt from around the battlefield, unifying to sound out as one. The exact reaction that Lexa, now hoisted onto Roan’s shoulder, was hoping for.

It’s a slow process, making their way across the field, but it gives Lexa the chance to collect her thoughts. The burn in her veins intensifies, making her conscious of every scar and wound on her body. 

The kill marks on her chest, which she doesn’t really like but understands the importance of, the round scar on her shoulder, a reminder of Titus’s near-fatal betrayal, all the little reminders of the years of her life spent protecting the free people of the united clans. Then there is one, often mistaken for a bad stab wound on her stomach, that reminds her of the life before Heda.

The slow trample comes to a halt on the edge of a vast forest, noticeably cooler than the heat permeating from the battleground. The noises of Azgeda getting smashed now strangely faint, Lexa quickly recites some spells of protection on herself. None of them will save her from death, but they may keep it at bay if it comes too close. 

‘ _ Bloka _ ,’ shield; ‘ _ drag daun jus _ ,’ delay the blood; ‘ _ nowe drop of jova,’  _ never lose courage.

It fills her, the ever-burning fire that never hurts, with a sense of strength. 

Roan shakes her, signalling to play dead or actually die.

‘None is allowed near the Azplana, turn around or greet death!’ the rough voice of a guard roars, and the noise of drawing weapons fling across the muted sounds of everything else. 

‘Not even her own kin, presenting the gift of a dead Lexa, Heda kom Trikru?’ Roan questions calmly.

The guards debate lowly, out of earshot, before Lexa’s companion moves again.

They walk, for what seems a long time. Just long enough that she can’t help but wonder if she’s been lured directly into a trap. Then, just when she wonders if she should pray to a god she doesn’t believe in, they stop once more.

‘Roan, my son, what do you bring that allows you to go against my direct orders? I hope that it’s justifiable, or I will have no son and Azgeda will have no prince!’ a shrill voice shouts, cutting through the air bringing nothing but the sense that the strong, renowned Nia kom Azgeda has been struck by panic.

‘Nia,’ he says, devoid of anything even resembling maternal love, ‘I bring the gift of Lexa, Heda kom Trikru, uniter of the twelve clans. Dead.’

Lexa can’t help but wonder how many times he’s considered matricide. It sounds like a lot.

Steps close in on them, and her body is thrown harshly to the stamped ground. Unnaturally cold rays of sun hit her face, confirming that they are in a clearing of some kind. A swift kick to her side almost makes her jolt, but Lexa stays completely still.

The berries are wearing off.

‘Roan, this means you wield the flame. Prove it is truly you who ended the reign of Heda.’

Lexa feels him shake lightly, but he raises one arm. With a nearly inaudible incantation, she sends a bolt of electricity out his hand. He’s clearly jolted by it, but manages to pull off a look of confidence in himself. Once the  _ Azplana _ ’s voice is heard again, Lexa thanks every deity imaginable that Nia doesn’t understand the flame to the point of knowing that no incantation can be made non-verbally.

‘This,’ Nia’s voice fills with victorious confidence as she speaks, ‘changes everything. Gather the troops, close enough that the blasted unified armies can hear what I announce.’ It brings a rush of contempt to Lexa’s gut. To expect victory before the battle is over is to gamble the lives of troops. She might not like anyone fighting for the queen of Azgeda, but she does pity them.

It doesn’t take long. Considering the previous battle, Lexa suspects that many Azgeda warriors would like nothing more than to surrender. After her presumed demise, the troops of the united clans didn’t lower their weapons: they fought back stronger, faster and harder than ever. The flame lived on through them.

The wind on her face means that they’re on a heightening of sorts, perhaps a hill or a quickly assembled stage. Her troops are obviously suspecting a surrender, or they wouldn’t give Nia the freedom of speaking.

The arms carrying her, nearly in a sort of cradle, are still Roan’s. She hears him whisper four simple words, words that assure her that her back is covered. 

‘I fight for you.’

A hush spreads among the assembled armies, a clear line dividing them from the Ice nation troops.

‘Brave Azgeda warriors!’ the queen starts, and no one answers back, ‘and the armies of the twelve clans!’ once again, no one pays the respect of an answer. ‘Lexa, Heda kom Trikru, uniter of the clans, is dead!’ 

A few roars erupts from warriors of Azgeda, but they’re swiftly shut down by their own comrades.

‘Armies of the clans, you who answer to the eternal flame of Heda. My son, Prince Roan kom Azgeda, now carries it.’ Nia pauses, likely just for the effect of it. Lexa nearly laughs. Her armies answer to a qualified leader, not to the violent slaying of the former one. ‘It flows in his veins, it fills his heart. Join us, or suffer a violent death at his hand!’

Roan releases her and Lexa jumps up, pure energy sending everyone near to their knees.

A pale hand, one which Heda knows and Lexa loves, throws her a spear. Nia has gotten up and glares at her, pure hatred shining across her face. Her features go limp when Lexa, with all the strength in her body and all the might of Heda, sends the spear through the  _ Azplana _ ’s chest. Her final word to her opponent, only a thought flitting through her mind:  _ Natrona _ .

Gazing gliding over the assembly in front of her, though just through her good eye, she allows a slight smile to grace her face.

‘The Queen is dead,’ she roars, grabbing and lifting Roan’s hand, ‘all hail the King!’

Raucous victory howls spread through the Free armies of the clans, and soon the Azgeda join in. Lexa doesn’t notice, because just then a cloaked warrior steps onto the podium and remove the hood covering her face.

Clarke walks up to her, a grin splitting her face. 

‘We did it.’ Lexa feels like these words aren’t enough, doesn’t cover the enormity of a million different feelings thundering through her, but it’s all she can think to say.

‘Because of you,’ Clarke continues, before grabbing the commander by her slender neck and connecting their lips. It’s a fire unlike anything Lexa’s ever known, stronger than what runs in her veins, what  _ makes  _ things be and people fight. A word, one she’d learned all those years ago in a life that doesn’t seem like hers anymore, is what she believes it to be.

It’s a supernova. The explosion of a star that makes all else of creation possible. That’s what kissing Clarke feels like.

She disconnect them, though it pains her endlessly, and grabs the hand of her  _ hodnes.  _ ‘Clarke, you are what gives me strength. You took command. You are the true commander in all of this.’

Before her blonde companion can answer, Lexa turns to face the armies once more.

‘Warriors!’ silence descended upon the gathering, the commander’s voice ringing unnaturally loud, ‘For too long, the shadow of the Ice Queen’s reign of terror has covered this land!’ applause booms, none louder than the Azgeda warriors’.

‘Now, we are truly free!’

The impromptu celebration lasts well into the next day, after the wounded are treated and the dead paid their respect. Lexa hears none of it.

She spends the night with the only person she sees, the only person she hears: Clarke.

‘Sit still, Lex. We have to clean the wound,’ Clarke says, dabbing the cut down her face with a cleansing herbal concoction. Still squirming, she can’t help but laugh. It doesn’t stick.

‘Clarke, why are you crying?’ Lexa asks,worry lacing her tone. Gently stroking the blonde’s cheek, she just looks at her.

‘These are happy tears. We did it, Lex, we really did it.’

It’s not something the brunette can put her finger on, but something isn’t completely right with the statement.

Saving it for the next day, however, seems the right course of action. They both sleep, exhausted from far too long of a battle for two people so cruelly young, in a warm embrace.

The next day, something is definitely up with Clarke. Lexa can tell just from looking at her, when they go to the more or less assembled troops. They all face their two leaders, but Lexa can’t shake the feeling that they’re way too somber for the day after such a historic victory.

‘Today,’ she starts, gaining everyone’s attention, ‘we mourn the dead and honour the living. Say your goodbyes, and do it right, but let us never rest in the past for too long.’

Then, the figure of a woman well-known to Lexa steps forward through the crowd.

‘Anya?’

‘Lexa,’ she says, voice low and…  _ Sensitive _ ? It certainly isn’t something Lexa’s heard previously, ‘you’ve done your duty. You’ve done it magnificently. We pulled you from your world for this, and I apologize. Take care, please.  _ Kefa, keryon kom Heda. Kyon yu foutaim.’ _

Lexa’s eyes shoots up pleadingly, turning towards Clarke. Her beloved Clarke, whose tears are certainly not happy. ‘Please, no-’ She goes for a final kiss, her veins burning with unhindered magic, never quite making it before Anya puts a hand on her head and everything goes black.

\--

Her eyelids are heavy. Impossibly heavy. The bed beneath her is not her own. It’s not nearly soft enough, with no furs and  _ no Clarke.  _ That’s when she notice; the fire is gone. No burn in her veins, no warmth filling her body. No warmth at all.

Lexa still can’t force her eyes open, but with all the might she possesses she feels what she lies on. It feels like… Linen? The shock strains her eyes open, and she immediately wish them closed once more.

It’s her childhood bedroom. The one she was pulled from years prior, into her life as Heda.  _ They sent me back,  _ she thinks, and bile rises in her throat. How could they? How  _ dare  _ they? Leaning over the edge, she pukes everything that previously resided in her stomach. She wants Clarke’s herbs and she wants to make herself better with the sparks that flit from her fingertips. Neither is possible.

Looking around, at the posters of bands she doesn’t remember and the trinkets that means absolutely nothing to her, she notice that both her eyes work. It might seem like a small thing, but she  _ feels  _ both her eyes work and then she feels warm tears fill them.

Standing up, she goes to the full-size mirror in the corner of her room and looks. She looks and looks but can’t, simply  _ can not  _ recognize the person that stares back at her. Lexa’s face is young, way too young, all too innocent. The deep cut down the left side of her face is gone. The kill scars, though she’s never really liked them, are  _ missing  _ from the part of her chest visible above her sports bra. The spandex feels scratchy, unnatural.

Her shoulder aches, which has happened consistently since the cutting blade of Titus, but there is no scar. No damaged tissue and no flawed skin. Looking over her body, all the missing tattoos and blemishes that never existed in this world. 

The  _ only  _ right thing is the cut, long ago healed, along her stomach. The Trikru always asked when she was stabbed, but it’s from when she was ten and her appendix had been removed. 

Shakings shoot up her spine and Lexa collapsed, cheeks wet and sobs ripping through her throat. With everything swirling through her mind, she can only focus on Clarke; wonderful, strong, soft, amazing Clarke.

Clarke who showed her how to hunt. Clarke who taught her every lilt and vowel of the trigedasleng language. Clarke whom she loved. Clarke that she  _ loves _ . It burns in her chest, but not the  _ right  _ burn. Not the magic kind, not the happy kind, not  _ okay _ . She’s not okay. Lexa is not okay. Nothing is at all, in any way, all right.

How  _ could  _ they?

A knock on her door startles her, but the heaves continue unhindered. 

‘Lexie?’

It’s her stepmom. The voice evokes no feelings in her, no matter how hard she tries to feel something.  _ Anything _ . 

The door opens, and Sienne steps in.

‘Oh my god, Lexa! Are you alright?’ she asks, her voice shrill and concerned.

‘Tristan! TRISTAN!’ she calls, and thundering steps boom from the stairway. Her dad rushes in and in the midst of all her chaos, Lexa finds humor in the fact that for once both her parents are home. Her  _ parents _ . Her fucking parents. She doesn’t want them. 

Lexa wants Indra and Gustus and Anya and  _ Clarke _ . 

Her dad looks at the puke and at her, his head going back and forth almost comically. Almost. ‘Alexandria, are you ill?’ he asks, but it has an edge of something. 

That certain something that always creeps into his voice when he can rationalize something, and therefore becomes uninterested. It used to bother her no end, but it doesn’t anymore. He doesn’t. 

‘Leave me alone.’ Her voice is weak, defeated.

‘What?’ he asks, in that stern don’t-talk-to-me-like-that voice.

‘Leave. Me. Alone.’ she repeats, no louder but more forceful. She can almost hear them exchanging glances, but they leave and she can breathe, just a little bit.

They remind Lexa of what she does not want to acknowledge: she’s stuck here, in the life she never wanted and never missed.

\--

She goes to school, ignoring her parents on the way out. Sixteen year old Lexa used to enjoy it somewhat, but it means nothing to the twenty one year old but now sixteen again Lexa. Her friends greets her and she can’t even pretend to care. 

In biology, she nearly breaks down when the teacher mentions a plant that grew in the forests within Trigeda boundaries as well. 

At lunch she sits and listens to the friends she once casually enjoyed, but never really felt any attachment to, ramble on and on.

At home, she ignores concerned glances and try to write down every trigedasleng word and phrase she remembers, afraid that her memories will fade. Cursing her inability to draw, she describes Clarke with words. Lexa can’t handle that she might fade from memory. How could Clarke think she’d want  _ this _ ? Would Clarke forget her? Why did no one think for a goddamn fucking second to just  _ ask  _ if she wanted to go back? The questions continue but no one answers.

Lexa dreams of spears and wounds and battlefields, waking up feeling drenched in blood and without the ability to breathe.

\--

The flame is gone and she aches for it. The cold feels infinite in her bloodstream and she can do  _ nothing.  _ Her body is too soft and her eyes too empty. She enrolls to kickboxing classes just to regain some of her hardness. 

Her boots feel wrong without a knife, so she buys one and feels stupid because it’s absolutely unnecessary in this world. 

Her arms feel wrong from the lack of tattoos, so she takes her all the money she has and forge her dad’s signature on a permission slip, but she can neither draw nor explain and the tribal pattern down the entirety of her right arm isn’t exactly  _ right  _ but it’s better and she regains an inch of her breath.

Later, when her sleeves doesn’t quite reach far enough, she takes the yells and screams of her parents and goes to bed, waking up drenched in blood that isn’t there. 

\--

Lexa is kicked off the kickboxing team after challenging the biggest guy there and, once in the ring, letting Trikru instinct kick in and beating him bloody. He looks like Gustus, a little bit, but certainly isn’t as good a fighter.

\--

She turns seventeen and both moves out and drops out. She’d tried and tried to enjoy school, but it’s impossible. It doesn’t  _ matter _ . The fire is gone. 

One time, walking past an alleyway, she feels a pull of something. Something not of this world. It’s gone in the blink of an eye, and Lexa curses herself for weeks for not being fast enough.

\--

Lexa has no one.

\-- 

She comes to realize she don’t care. All she wants is to go back.

\--

Clarke is in her dreams, but so is blood and gore and the spinning unrealness of panic. When these attacks hit, it’s worse than any blow or cut she’s ever received. Not on this body, though she can absolutely still feel them. She wants Clarke’s calming words, her soothing touches.

\--

Lexa sees Clarke everywhere. In a snippet of blonde hair or a model with the same body type. But never the eyes. She wants to see those eyes.

\--

It’s not just Clarke. She sees Anya’s kicks from a MMA champion on tv, Indra’s shout when she passes a squad of police academy trainees, Gustus’s warm voice from a radio host. It never sticks. It’s never  _ real _ . Nothing feels completely real.

\--

Lexa writes and writes, everything she can remember. It never fades from her memory.

\--

She feels the pull of magic once in awhile, always in small flairs and never enough. Her bones still feel cold and  _ empty _ , and she’s never fast enough.

\--

She trains harder than she ever did, even as Heda, until her body is hard as rock. Using her writing abilities, gained from the  _ grounder memoirs  _ as she calls them in her head, she writes a book about getting in shape. It’s not because she wants to, but because it pays the bills and allows her to get more ink into her skin. Her first paycheck is spent mostly on getting the Helm of  Awe produced by a jeweller, and having something she’d once said herself tattooed on her back.

It might seem egotistical, to tattoo her own words, she thinks. But it’s a promise she meant, and one she intends to keep.

Two hours and not enough sting to be a real grounder tattoo later, she stares at the words and feels a little bit more connected to  _ her  _ world.

_ I swear fealty to you, Clarke kom Skaikru. I vow to treat your needs as my own, and your people as my people. _

It’s a comfort.

\--

She turns eighteen, and she avoids mirrors. She doesn’t recognize herself. This isn’t how she’s  _ supposed  _ to look at eighteen.

\--

The pull feels stronger this time. She doesn’t hesitate to go through the energy, landing in the middle of a forest. It’s not her world, but it’s better. Closer. She feels it.

\-- 

It takes nearly a year of wandering around, looking, making friends with the local shamans, until she feels the pull again. 

Going through the portal once more, Lexa can breathe just a little bit more.

\--

This time, it’s a ship. The kind made out of wood and with huge sails, in the middle of a storm. A pirate ship, she realizes, when the crew calls her a scurvy-ridden maggot and tries to make her walk the plank.

It takes all her diplomatic, and a great deal of her swordsman, skill to convince them she’s an asset worth keeping aboard. 

In this world, she feels the lack of burn in her veins more than ever and it cools her spirit. Which is practical, she concludes, when she spends what seems an eternity before they get to a harbor.

It takes another long journey with a different crew, but she finds the energy once more and jumps.

\--

Medieval and with plenty of magic, but none of her exact kind, the next is difficult. Hard, because she senses the portal immediately but it’s in the crooked kings castle, and it is as heavily guarded as she is tired.

Tired of fighting but never reaching. Only the thought of Clarke and the desolation she feels fuels her to keep going.

An uprising of farmers later, and she goes through.

\--

Her veins burn and she can’t see from her left eye, and Lexa is overcome with wonder. It’s taken cuts, bruises and endless solitude, but she’s made it. The sand that fills her mouth and blinds her eyes is nothing to the bleakness of being  _ anywhere  _ but here. Her world. The world in which Clarke is and she’s finally,  _ finally  _ herself again.

Her shoulder aches from the bump that  _ is  _ there. Her face, once she feels it with her wonderfully calloused fingers,  _ is  _ scarred over the left eye from a cut she  _ did  _ receive from Roan.

Lexa is twenty one again-again, in a body and world that is her own. It’s taken a hundred worlds, but she’s home.

Cursing the portal she can never ever hate for bringing her here, she realizes that it dropped her in the dead zone. With no food and no water, but she’ll be damned if she made it this far just to die an arms length from her destination.

Remembering her orientational teachings, she follows a ninety degree angle upwards from where the sun will soon set. 

Lexa walks through the night, continuing north. An inch of doubt weasels into her mind: what if they don’t want her? If they just needed a saviour, and Clarke has moved on. What if Anya never liked her above knowing that she’d fight for them, if Indra really isn’t as brute and harsh with anybody else, what if Gustus was kind only to keep her fighting?

She continues anyway.

It takes three days and some helpful nomads to get her out of the sand and glaring sun. At the first sight of the forest boundary of Trikru, she laughs. It feels foreign in Lexa’s mouth. She hasn’t laughed since the last time she walked these lands.

Remembering a simple incantation she used to do all the time, she yells ‘ _ BUKA!’  _ way louder than she needs to. The fire in her veins is better than she ever remembers it being, and she is now faster than she’s been in five years. Five  _ years  _ it’s taken her.

The swirl of running through the forest she can still navigate with ease is intoxicating, and it seems like no time has passed before she’s at the city gates of Polis.

Strolling in at normal speed, she sees people stare at her clothes and face, townspeople ogling her clothes, warriors fixating on the scar on her face. They know who got that scar and in which battle.

At the gates of Polis tower, the guards, Artigas and Caris, doesn’t even lower their weapons. Instead, they stare in awe at their returned Heda.

At the top floor, Lexa can’t help but set into a sprint, bursting into the war room with a might that nearly sends the door off it’s hinges. The might of Heda.

At the war table, all heads turn towards her and she knows each and every one of them. Lexa is beaten and bruised and tired, but when she lays her eyes on Clarke at the end of the table, none of it matters.

‘Lexa?’ 

Her voice is full of awe, just as the face of everyone sitting there, but Lexa sees only her  _ hodnes _ .

Clarke is walking slowly towards her, but after an eternity spent apart Lexa has no patience for slow. She runs, catching the blonde in a crushing embrace and soon after, a searing kiss. 

‘I’ve missed you more than you know,’ is all Clarke can think to say, lips only momentarily apart.

‘Survival is possible, but I can’t do any more than that without you,’ Lexa answers.

It takes a long time,  _ no time at all,  _ Lexa thinks, before she has to disconnect them to face the rest of the room. Intertwining their hands is a must, because she’s gone so long,  _ so long  _ without that touch and she won’t ever let go again.

Indra, Gustus, Anya, Lincoln, Octavia, they’re all there. Looking towards the end of the table, she sees another blonde that has always rested uneasily in her conscious: Aden is sitting, tears hard fought brimming his eyes, staring at her. He's older now, nearly an adult.

‘Ho-ho-how are you here?’ Anya stutters, and had it been five years ago, Lexa would have never stopped teasing her about crying. It isn’t.

‘If you  _ ever  _ as much as think about sending me back, I will personally cut you a thousand times,’ her voice is darker than she feels, but she needs them to understand, ‘I spent five years in agony because no one thought to just take a moment, a  _ single  _ moment to ask me if I wanted to go!’ Lexa hears her own voice grow louder, but she can’t and won’t prevent it.

‘I love you all. Each and every one of you. I had  _ nothing  _ where I came from, yet you sent me back to a world that wasn’t mine, to a body that wasn’t. Mine. I suffered through panic attacks and displacement, through missing the love of my life and an emptiness so deep that I’d  _ rather  _ suffer death by a thousand cuts!’ her voice a roar, but then she's done. She has said what needs saying on that subject. She finally feels free. 

Not because it pleases her to cause pain, but because they all meet her eyes with regret. A regret that means she’s never going back again. Joy fills her eyes and soon enough, the others join in. They have missed her terribly, after all.

The fire is burning, Clarke is near and Lexa is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this (posted by charminglyantiquated on tumblr):  
> there’s dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one, being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where they’re delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didn’t miss it? what if you save the world and you’re given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and you’re furious.
> 
> maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you can’t talk to anyone about. and suddenly you’re fifteen again, in a body that’s too soft and too short and too complete. you’re always cold because there’s no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesn’t go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what you’re supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didn’t make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out.
> 
> but here’s the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they can’t undo everything. and there’s this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you can’t tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world.
> 
> but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. you’re dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and don’t look back. it’s not your world, but if you keep going long enough, you’ll get there.
> 
> (and maybe much, much later, hundreds of worlds later, you climb through a window, or a door of woven branches int he middle a field, or push aside a curtain, and as you set foot on new land you feel the fire in your veins and sparks at your fingertips and finally, finally, you’re home)


End file.
